


i know places

by andibeth82



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Clint Barton's Farm, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-02
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-23 20:32:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2554670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So you have a farm,” Natasha says after they’ve sat in silence for far too long.</p><p>[The fic in which Clint tries to evade therapy and run away after the events of The Avengers and Winter Soldier, and Natasha actually kind of lets him (until she doesn’t), and he eventually ends up doing his soul searching on a farm he didn’t even know he owned. Oh, and his brother Barney’s there, too.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	i know places

**Author's Note:**

> This is, in a nutshell, an attempt to corral my Barton brother feelings, and my Clint and Natasha Trying To Find Themselves Again feelings, along with the newly canon-appropriate inclusion of “Clint has a farm.” It initially began as a story where Clint sets off on a road trip intent on trying to figure out his life post Winter Soldier and instead grew into something much larger. It's probably longer than it should be. 
> 
> Thanks to fidesangelus for the read-through and late night texts. Title stolen shamelessly from the Taylor Swift of the same name.
> 
>  
> 
> _baby, i know places we won't be found_  
>  _and they'll be chasing their tails tryin' to track us down_  
>  _cause i know places we can hide_

“Can I ask you something, Agent Barton?”

“Be my guest.”

“What does the word _partner_ mean to you?”

(That was strike number one.)

 

***

 

Strike number two comes not long after, when Clint gives a very detailed description of the ways he would target, attack, and then kill the agents standing guard outside the room he’s being questioned in, while sitting on a bed in Medical’s psychology ward.

The attendant sighs and rolls his shoulders, leaning forward and pressing down hard on the tip of his pen.

“When you’re done joking, Agent Barton, we’ll continue.”

Clint blinks in rapid succession, and then shrugs once, loosely.

“I didn’t say I was joking.”

 

***

 

The third therapist is where Clint finally loses it, and really, as he walks out of the room, his only thought is that someone should congratulate him that it took this long.

“What happened? You know, I wish I could tell you,” he snaps, digging his fingers into the upholstery of the couch. “I really, really do.”

“Agent Barton, this is not an interrogation –”

“No, really. Ever needed to use one of those white noise machines to help you sleep? It was kind of like that. There was a lot of static. And a lot of words and orders, but I couldn’t hear anything else, and no one could get through the noise, so it was just this constant drone. Except, I mean, for him.”

He’s discharged for disorderly conduct and handed a note that he doesn’t bother to read before he crumples it up and throws it in the trash on the way out the door. From what he had managed to catch, it says something about “reassessing priorities,” and something about “forced leave of absence,” and, well, it’s a victory, he thinks, all things considered, as he scuffs his foot against the elevator floor.

 

***

 

“You really did a number on this one,” Natasha intones dryly when she walks in the door of the apartment some hours later, finding him hunched over his laptop staring at a batch of surveillance photos. “It’s like you’re trying for some sort of record.”

Clint looks up, watching her walk to the kitchen as she deposits her gun onto the table, hearing the sharp _snap_ and then _crack_ as she opens what he knows is a can of soda. Sharing living space is still something that’s new and strange and sometimes even a little awkward, and both of them would admit that as much as they’ve shared small areas before (in quarters, in travel, in safe houses), co-existing on a day-to-day basis is not exactly a thing that either of them has had much experience with.

But Natasha had no place to really go after New York, and Clint’s apartment was bigger than he needed it to be for one person, and, well, truth be told, it helped not to be alone during the first few days after they sent Loki and Thor back into space.

It wasn’t his fault that she never asked to leave, and it wasn’t her fault that he never bothered to press about it.

“I’m trying to make a point,” Clint replies flippantly, closing his laptop as he gets up from the couch. “Everyone thinks I need some sort of therapy. I don’t.”

“Really?” Natasha gives him a look that he thinks years ago would have sent him running for the street or at least scrambling for an apology, a look that now just makes him internally wince in anticipation of what he knows is coming next. “Because it looks to me like you just had a God in your brain for three days.”

“And I’ve had dozens of missions end badly, and yeah, I need someone to talk to, but I’m not _crazy_ ,” he says, emphasizing the last word with a bitter twinge. Natasha snorts.

“No one said you were crazy, Barton.”

“Mallory with the hair implied it.”

“Mallory with the hair also tried to convince me that my previous life was a fever dream,” Natasha reminds him, leaning against the wall. “SHIELD psychotherapists are not exactly the organization’s strongest assets.”

Clint sighs at that, making a face. “Then why are you insisting I talk to them?”

“I’m not,” Natasha says in exasperation, folding her arms. “I’m saying, you need to talk to _someone_. If you won’t talk to me, if you really are okay, at least find someone you feel comfortable with. Preferably outside of SHIELD, if you’re so inclined.” She closes the gap between them, reaching for his hand and wrapping her fingers gently around his palm.

“You can run your mouth all you want, but you can’t keep all of this locked up, Barton. I don’t care how much experience you have.”

 

***

 

See, the thing that annoys Clint the most is that as a spy, his life has never been about _morals_. All that crap they feed you in training, harping on the greater good and servicing your country? Yeah, they tend to leave out the part where being an agent also means that you never go home without being anxiety-ridden about making a different call, or knowing that however much you saved someone, the lying and shooting and killing and deceiving is someone else’s nightmare. If he’s being realistic (and he usually is), Clint hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in years, though Natasha’s presence has made it easier to extract that slice of normalcy he always used to desperately crave.

It was just simple truth that spies – and the secrets that came with them – weren’t exactly free of a guilty conscious. Natasha wasn’t any more pure or any more reformed than he was and they both knew it, which is why despite the fact that they probably needed therapy more than half their peers, they were normally able to skirt past by keeping themselves mentally aware, recognizing what role their jobs played in their lives.

“Clint.” Natasha’s toe pokes into his calf, her voice hoarse and muffled into the pillow. “Shut up.”

He rolls over in response, taking half her arm with him, tucking her fingers underneath his chin as he twists them in his own.

(By the way, that thing about turning your mind off? Turns out that when someone lives the same damn life as you, it makes it impossible to hide.)

“I don’t need therapy,” Clint grumbles, and Natasha huffs out air.

“That’s really what’s wrong? I know you better than that.” She uses one arm to prop herself up on her elbow. “Try again.”

Clint turns in the opposite direction, flopping onto his back, letting their hands fall as his head sinks into the pillow. “Come on, Nat. You really wanna spend another night babysitting my guilt?”

“It’s not your guilt if we’re both feeling it,” Natasha responds pointedly, clearing lingering vestiges of sleep from her voice and pressing her chin into his arm. “I had stuff to think about too, you know. While you were missing.”

“Yeah,” Clint says because he knows (oh, he _knows_ ), but he doesn’t like to think about that kind of stuff, because thinking about the innocent people that he killed while under Loki’s control was bad enough. Thinking of the hurt and pain he had caused Natasha and what she had undergone at the expense of getting him back…well, okay, maybe he did need therapy, if he was being honest.

“I’m just saying.” Natasha kicks at the space between his legs. “I don’t want you to think that you have to hide from me.”

“I’m not hiding,” Clint defends even though he knows the words are a lie, even though he can see Natasha’s skeptical eyebrow raise targeting him through the dark. He heaves another sigh. “Entirely.”

“Then tell me what’s going on.” She’s sitting up now, alert and awake, and he instinctively knows that he’s not going to be able to get out of this – at least, not without being convincing.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Natasha mutters, flinging the covers off. Clint feels the shift in the mattress as she leaves the bed and then moves himself, the bottoms of his bare feet slapping against the floor.

“I take it you’re not coming back to bed?” he asks as he walks into the kitchen, watching her take a mug from the top shelf.

“When you stop thinking of running away, I’ll come back to bed,” Natasha replies, filling a kettle with water and placing it on the burner. Clint grimaces.

“It’s not running away.”

“It’s running away,” she repeats flatly, turning the knob on the stove and sitting down at the table. “Because you’re afraid of what’s going to happen to yourself if you stay here.”

“Yeah, well –” He stops, because he realizes he doesn’t know how to continue, and places his hands on his hips. “How did you know?”

She pins him with a gaze that almost borders on insulted. “That you were thinking of leaving? I don’t have to know. I can tell.” _I did the same thing_ , she doesn’t say, but then, he also knows she doesn’t have to.

“So then why even ask?”

Natasha sighs, leaning on the back of the chair. “Maybe to see if you’ll give me a direct answer, rather than me having to pry it out of you like a child.”

Clint looks down because he’s not sure what to say, because what do you say that’s not _yeah,_ _I’m a mess_ , that’s not _well, what’s your point?_ or even _fuck, you were right all along, and I can’t admit it._

 

***

 

“You sure you want to do this?” Natasha asks two days later as she watches him stuff another bag into the trunk of his car. Clint grunts as he slams the trunk shut.

“Yeah,” he says when he turns around, and there are lines on his face that he knows she can read, that he hopes she won’t call him out on. Natasha purses her lips but says nothing, just steps into his space and pulls him into a hug, wrapping her arms around his back the way he remembers her doing on so many other occasions: a goodbye when it’s not really goodbye, a comfort when it’s not really asked for. He presses his fingers into the space between her shoulder blades, taking in the smell of her hair and the way her skin feels beneath his fingers.

“Be careful, okay?” She draws back, kissing him lightly on the hollow of his neck, and then turns to walk back into the building. Clint waits until she’s shut the door behind her before sliding into the driver’s seat and slipping on his sunglasses.

He knows she’s watching him from the window and as he drives off, he feels reassured in at least that, the thought that no matter how fucked up the world got, some things might never change.

 

***

 

“This is monsters and magic and nothing we were ever trained for,” Natasha says when she’s looking into his eyes and trying with everything she knows to convince him that he shouldn’t keep beating himself up for his actions.

And she’s talking, and she’s putting her hand on his arm, and all Clint can think is _no shit, really?_ Because, sure, SHIELD prepares you for what to do if you get brainwashed, in the off chance you get caught in a really compromising position, but they don’t teach you how to deal with having a manic Asgardian in your mind.

 

***

 

He drives across at least six states before setting down his roots in a hotel room in Idaho.

Fucking _Idaho_.

If he really wanted to disappear, he would have picked Latvia, or Madripor, or some place that wasn’t actually drivable and that you needed a passport to get to. But that’s out of the question given his mental state and anyway, he doesn’t really want to disappear the way Natasha probably would. He just wants to get away. Away from New York, away from his mind, away from everyone who has been trying to help…

Well. Almost everyone.

He does some work in the city’s field office, which is really not so much a field office as it is a tiny room in the middle of nowhere, keeps himself busy by writing reports and taking phone messages. He flies under the radar as much as possible so that people don’t exactly know they’re talking to Clint Barton, _the_ Clint Barton who was under Loki’s spell, who assassinated half a dozen innocent (maybe) agents. He spends about a month and a half pretending that the things that bother him most in his life don’t exist, and makes friends with the girl who works late nights at the dive bar down the road, becomes an unapologetic regular during trivia and gets used to beer that costs less than three dollars.

He thinks about calling Natasha, sometimes just to talk on the way home when he’s slightly more than tipsy, or just to relay a dumb conversation he’s overheard at the office, but always thinks better of it because there’s a part of him that knows if he breaks that silence he’s afforded himself, everything will go to shit and she’ll wonder why he even bothered to leave in the first place.

And then one day about two months down the line, he’s in the middle of eating a disgusting tuna sandwich that he’s picked up from Target, when he casually overhears one of his co-workers talking about some Norse god takeover in London. He overhears their awe and surprised reaction, hears the word “aliens,” and “ _shit, did you hear about that Avenger that almost died again? Heard they almost had to call in back-up from the States._ ”

Clint gets in the car the next morning and drives back to New York, and when he walks in the door, Natasha is in the middle of carrying coffee and almost drops her cup on the floor in surprise.

“You didn’t tell me you were coming back,” she accuses as she steps towards him after safely returning the mug to the counter. Clint shrugs.

“Would you have believed me if I told you?”

Natasha glares at him and shakes her head. “No,” she admits after a long moment, and then Clint can’t stop himself as he opens his arms, allowing her to fold into them while she nestles her face against his chest.

“How are you?” she asks, and when she pulls away there are small wet circles bleeding into his shirt. Clint takes a breath.

“Okay. I’m okay,” he says, because he really _is_ okay (he thinks) and she makes a noise as she curls into his body. “How are you?”

Natasha raises her head, searching his face. “Okay,” she repeats slowly and he knows what she means, because okay with them never really means _okay_ as much as it means _I can get through a day,_ means _I can be a little more than fine because you’re with me,_ means _I’m not as alone as I let myself feel._

“Got you a present,” he says when they finally break apart, shoving two fingers into the pocket of his leather jacket. He comes away with a small brown bag, the top of which is twisted and balled and slightly ripped, pushing it into her hand as he talks. Natasha raises her eyebrows and opens it curiously, shaking a small silver arrow into her palm.

“You don’t have to wear it,” he says after a moment, watching the way she turns the necklace over in her hands, as if studying it with the same careful scrutiny she would study a piece of code. “But I wanted you to have it. In case this ever happens again.”

“You mean in case you disappear to fix your problems without me?” she asks, even as she reaches up to fasten the chain around her neck, and he can tell she’s trying to be brash despite the vulnerability breaking through her words. Clint sighs.

“In case you need to be reassured that no matter what, I’ll always come home.”

He lets his eyes follow the arrow as it finds its place against her throat, and Natasha rocks up on the balls of her feet to kiss him. It’s thank you in the form of _I know_ , _I believe you_ , and _I’ll always come home, too_.

 

***

 

He goes back to work the next day and reinstates with Fury and eases himself back into the folds of his former life effortlessly enough and without much fanfare, and they take a few assignments together before he gets called away for a sniper mission in South America and she gets paired for a series of missions with Steve Rogers for what they both suspect should be a temporary amount of time.

And then SHIELD falls, and Hydra is exposed, and it all goes to hell. And all Clint can do is laugh because of the irony of the whole damn thing, because now, he could definitely use one of SHIELD’s dumb therapists free of charge, and there aren’t even any left for him to abuse.

 

***

 

On the day that Clint decides to leave for a second time, Natasha is standing on the porch of the residence that they’ve tucked themselves away in for the time being, her red hair wrapped tightly in a wet bun with droplets of water still trailing down her head, and he can see the silver chain of the necklace glinting in the outside light. He had come home from running errands to find her in the shower, but had missed her exiting the bathroom while he put away food and double-checked for bugs and other sources of possible infiltration, a sadly common and almost routine ritual at this point.

The safe house itself is a small home in Westchester, one that Clint supposes must have belonged to some former SHIELD agent, or maybe one of the many who fled the country after being exposed as Hydra. Natasha doesn’t let him dwell on that last thought anymore than he has to, instead keeps him busy by trading stories (because they’ve been back together for over two months but there are still _so many stories_ ) and by hashing out potential leads for future missions and by sparring together during late nights in the large basement.

“You’re gonna get sick if you stay out here,” he says after a moment of silence, leaning against the screen door before pushing it open. He watches as Natasha’s shoulders rise and fall.

“I’m sorry that I like being able to stand outside without worrying that someone is going to shoot me.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Clint mutters as he walks up beside her, carefully avoiding the scar on her shoulder, the one that’s still starkly visible through her thin tank top. He eases into one of the small wicker chairs and waits until she turns fully towards him.

“You can’t keep running away like this,” she says almost defiantly, and there’s a tremor in her voice that he can’t miss. “You know that.”

Clint swallows, cracking his knuckles out of habit.

“I know.”

“I blasted every single cover I had into the world, I destroyed this organization and _I’m_ not running.”

“I know.”

Natasha sighs, leaning back against the railing before taking a seat next to him. “How will I even know where to find you?”

“I’ll send a smoke signal.”

“ _Clint_.” She gives him a look that’s clearly rooted in _don’t fuck with me on this_ , and he nods his understanding. “Okay, okay. A code, then?”

She waits as if trying to decide whether his answer is worth a response, and then kicks her feet up onto his outstretched legs. “Give me a good one.”

 _A good one,_ Clint thinks, his mind mentally cataloging all their missions and assignments and the good and bad over the years.

“6-7-2.”

He says the numbers without thinking, watches as Natasha’s face changes, her mask of emotion slipping just enough to let him know she gets it, because they both know what 6-7-2 means to her, to them, to the world. He knows it means trust and betrayal and ultimately middle ground. He knows it means everything and nothing at the same time, and he knows she’ll accept it as an appropriate form of confidence between them, even if she verbally tells him otherwise.

“I still don’t like it,” is all she says when she gets up a few minutes later, slamming the door behind her, and Clint lets himself stay outside awhile longer while the last rays of sun disappear into dusk. She comes back about five minutes later with a mug of instant coffee that smells like stale bark and despite his anxiety at leaving he starts to feel a little better because, well, her bringing him coffee at night was their code for a kind of strange truce, a grudging reminder that she hasn’t totally given up on him.

 

***

 

He doesn't bother with Idaho this time, and heads straight for Iowa.

Somewhere, he thinks Natasha is laughing that he traded one boring state with the same letter for another.

 

***

 

At least Iowa is nice to look, and a little more green, at least where the Midwest is concerned. And Clint hasn’t been here since his childhood, not enough to appreciate it, and he’s forgotten about the small shops and the barren roads and everything that he’s taken for granted after having spent his life traveling to cities and opulent countries and the lowest points of the world.

He stops just outside of Waverly and picks the Holiday Inn this time around, mostly because it’s one of the cheaper options that he comes across when calling for vacancies but also because he likes their continental breakfasts. The only available room for the length of his stay isn’t overly glamorous, but it’s clean and it’s simple, and that’s all he really needs.

Besides, there’s a 24-hour QuikTrip down the street, and a park that’s not too crowded within walking distance, and a diner that’s just over a mile away by car, and because there’s no more SHIELD it’s not like he needs to work. He just needs a place to fucking lie low without anyone asking him who he is or what he’s doing, to get a hold of himself and pretend that life doesn’t really exist in the way it’s existed for the past few months and maybe even years.

And so when Barney Barton walks into the hotel lobby at 4:30pm on a Wednesday while Clint is getting himself another cup of complimentary coffee, when he takes off his hat and says “I heard you fell off the grid, thanks for telling me,” Clint nearly shits himself because aside from Natasha, his brother is the last person he expects to see in the middle of fucking nowhere after the entire world has gone to hell.

 

***

 

“This is where you’ve been living?” Barney asks as he steps around one of Clint’s dirty sneakers after being let inside the room. Clint shrugs, because it’s what Natasha would say, only with less of an _I’m going to kill you_ tone.

“It works,” he says finally, because what the hell, it _does_. “I don’t need much in the way of comfort out here.”

Barney nods. “Yeah,” he says, and Clint wonders if they’re remembering the same thing, before he continues. “Stayed in a place like this after dad kicked me out during one of his benders. But the carpet wasn’t as nice.” He sits down on the bed, cracking a lopsided smile. “Good to know some things never change.”

“Have you seen the world?” Clint asks, dropping to the floor across from him, feeling a little calmer. “I might be the only thing in it that hasn’t.”

“Caught some stuff on the news, if that’s what you mean.” Barney reaches for one of Clint’s available six-packs on the side table, cracking a bottle with the green opener on his keychain. “That redhead who did the press conference – she’s yours, right?”

Clint balls his fists without thinking about it and swallows as the words catch in his throat. “Yeah. That’s Natasha.”

Barney nods, as if accepting knowledge he's already aware of, like they’re five and seven all over again and his brother is asking if he’s got a crush on the girl at school even though he already knows, and he just wants Clint to admit it for his own amusement. And then:

“If you want, you can come to my farm.”

Clint’s head snaps up, his eyes narrowing, and he does a double take. “Since when do you have a _farm_?”

Barney shrugs, looking nonplussed. “Since dad left it to us. In his will. Only, well, you kind of took off and got tangled with circus stuff and then disappeared, so I got the deed in my name when it came time to settle the score.” He scrunches up his face, his eyes disappearing into small slits. “And lemme tell you what a treat that was, dealing with the insurance agencies and mortgage companies and all of the shit grown-ups don’t tell you about when you’re left on your own.”

Clint opens his mouth to respond and then realizing he can’t find the appropriate words, closes it abruptly. “Dad had a farm?”

“Right? Took me by surprise, too. Not that he cared much for anything that didn’t come out of a bottle.” Barney snorts quietly and takes another drink. “But yeah, I guess so. Passed down in the family, or some sort of bullshit. It’s right in Waverly, too, off of the main roads. Who knew the Barton’s were so well off?”

“Yeah,” Clint mutters, leaning back on his hands. “Learn something new every day.” He studies the more interesting spots on the otherwise pristine ceiling, and when he sits back up, Barney’s staring at him with something akin to amusement.

“What?”

“Oh, come on.” Barney rolls his eyes, throwing a wadded up napkin at Clint’s face. “You can ignore me all you want, but if you really think I’m going to let my little brother stay in this shithole of a hotel room when I’ve got a huge house that’s also basically off the grid, you’ve got another thing coming.”

And Clint’s not sure if he wants to actually _go_ to the farm, but he does, because the thing is, he can’t really refute that offer, and because it means he doesn’t have to pay for a living space and, well, it’s probably safer and more comfortable than a damn hotel room.

 

***

 

Clint’s first impression of Barney’s farm ( _his_ farm, he reminds himself, because technically, it’s his farm as much as it is his brother’s, even if he hasn’t known about it until now) is that it’s big. Bigger than Clint would have thought for the amount of money that his parents had, a large ranch style house with a wide front porch and an outdated looking overhang, set on a stretch of land with some corralled fences in the distance, a dilapidated looking barn on the edge of the horizon and a few mustard-colored wilting crops that look as though they’ve seen much better days.

“Dad left all this to us?” Clint asks slowly as he gets out of the pick-up, dragging his bag behind him, shielding his eyes against the sun as he stares up at the house.

“All 230 acres,” Barney says. “Makes me think that maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.”

“Right,” Clint says dryly, trying to focus. “You know I still have slightly blurred vision in my left eye from where he knocked my head into the coffee table once?” He runs a hand through his hair. “Gonna take a lot more than property acquisition for me to think he was ever a decent guy.”

Barney hoists his bag over his shoulder and Clint hears him breathe as if he means to work up the courage to say something other than silence.

“Come on,” he says instead when he finally speaks, motioning towards the house. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”

Clint follows his brother slowly up the steps of the house, which seems to be as impressive on the inside as it is on the outside, all things considered. There’s a living room and kitchen on the ground floor as well as what Clint guesses is an extra bedroom, along with (Barney tells him) two other rooms and a separate bathroom upstairs. The fact that there’s furniture in each space and art on the walls makes it look entirely lived-in, though Clint knows enough from his own experiences to understand that just because things look put together, it doesn’t mean that they’re as authentic as they look. Still, it’s both overwhelming and more than Clint’s ever had in his entire life.

“Yours?” Clint asks, stopping halfway through the living room to stare at a painting on the wall, one of the only bursts of color against stark white and grey, and Barney shoves his hands into his pockets, looking a little forlorn as he comes to a stop next to him.

“Mom’s, I think,” he says after a moment. “Found it in the attic, tucked away under some of the old boxes. Put it up a few years ago…one of the only things that I thought might fit in here. Looked nice, you know?”

Clint nods in silence, blinking through his continued surprise at the scope of the house as Barney moves ahead of him, pointing out doors and wall colors and tromping up the hardwood stairs, where he helps Clint unload his bag in one of the smaller bedrooms.

“So this is where you’ve been living?” Clint asks later, when they’re sitting on the porch, watching the breeze slice through the row of trees on the side of the property. He leans back against the steps, watching his brother carefully.

“Sometimes. I mean, mostly. I was kind of on my own for awhile, but I’d come back here when I needed to reset.”

Clint swallows a sip of beer. “Not a bad place to do that,” he says, and Barney cracks his knuckles.

“Well, it beats a shitty Holiday Inn on the side of the highway, that’s for sure.”

Clint finds himself suppressing a smile without realizing it. “Yeah. It’s nice, though. Wish I would’ve known about it sooner…would’ve made a great safe house.”

“Could still be,” Barney says with a wave of his hand. “But I’ve seen the people you run around with and no offense, I’m not exactly up for running a damn hotel.”

Clint laughs and shakes his head. “If you’ve been following the news, you’d know that’s not exactly an option. I’m kind of…” He pauses, feeling Barney’s eyes on his face, and plays with the label of his bottle, which is sweating and peeling from condensation. “I’m kind of on my own.”

“'Cept for that redhead,” Barney reminds him nonchalantly, lifting an eyebrow. Clint sighs a little, clinking their drinks together.

“Yeah. Except for her.”

 

***

 

He doesn’t tell Natasha about the farm. Not at first. Not when she finds him at a roadside Denny’s eating waffles, tucked into the back corner with a dark green trucker hat pulled low over his eyes, a chipped mug of constantly refilled coffee at his elbow.

“What took you so long?” he asks without looking up as she slides into the booth and opens a menu. “Also, don’t bother looking, I ordered you pancakes with butter.”

Natasha knocks their knees together under the table, smiling a little as she closes the thick laminated booklet. “Like I’m going to come running at the first mention that you’re holed up somewhere, even if it means _pancakes_ ,” she says with a bite, and he catches the red lacerations along her wrists before she tugs down the too-short sleeves of her shirt over her hands. “You think I’m not paranoid enough about being tracked?”

Clint nods, leaning back and lifting the rim of his hat so that he can see more clearly. “Fair enough,” he concedes, using the moment to study her. The arrow necklace is crookedly prominent in its usual spot and her hair is longer, probably almost as long as it was when she first started working at SHIELD. He can tell from the way she moves that her shoulder is probably close to being fully healed, and her jacket is loose in a way that makes him wonder if she’s running more or eating less or worrying more or sleeping less.

“How have you been? Really?”

“Really?” Clint shrugs, finding her eyes. “Really, I’ve been good. It’s kind of nice not being around the general public, not worrying about my life. This whole running away thing is like my own form of therapy.”

She nods, as if she can read between the lines of his words, and he knows she can. “But you’re not coming back.”

“I need to…sort out a few things,” Clint says carefully, thinking of Barney. “What’s going on with you?”

Natasha shakes back her hair, playing with a sugar packet. “I’ve been on some assignments. The safe house is still holding, which is an incredible anomaly considering Hydra’s been going around sticking their noses in everything they can find that belongs to SHIELD.” She sighs. “Anyway, Fury has me traveling, looking up some leads, but mostly I’ve been lying low.”

“That’s all?” Clint asks, eyeing her and then glancing down towards her hands as Natasha takes his coffee, bringing it to her lips. This time, he notices she doesn’t bother to hide the way her sleeves ride up her arms, exposing more red on her skin, and he finds himself wondering why they sometimes even need words for their conversations.

“I’ve been tracking the man known as The Winter Soldier.”

“Ah.” Clint takes the cup back, feeling like he should say more but not knowing exactly how to phrase his thoughts. “Fury’s orders?”

“Not exactly,” Natasha replies with a voice that borders on hesitant.

“Dangerous?”

“I think so,” she says, keeping her tone level. “But maybe not.” Clint watches as she uses her own fork to cut a slice of his waffle, and waits until she swallows fully before he speaks again.

“So you’re not coming back yet, either.”

Natasha smiles as the waitress puts a large white plate down onto the table, along with another mug of coffee. “What gave it away?”

“The clothes,” he admits honestly, because he’s never known Natasha to dress so casual when she’s just making a visit to make sure one of them is okay somewhere, no matter how deep they are in hiding. “Anyway, eat your pancakes. They’ll get cold.”

Natasha reaches across the table, pushing a folded piece of paper into his hand. “If you need to reach me in the next few weeks, these are the numbers I’ll be at.” She looks up, catching his eye. “New phone each day. It’s easier than carrying a burner around…just ditch one for the other. I’ll send updates every two weeks with new information.”

Clint nods. “Thanks,” he says a little quietly, taking the note from her hand. Natasha smiles and starts on her food, and Clint continues to play with her foot under the table the way he used to do at SHIELD when they wanted to talk, but couldn’t find the right words.

 

***

 

So Barney gets Clint a job working late hours at the diner down the road, and Clint’s okay with that mostly because it means he gets to hang around during the day and explore the farm without feeling the pressures of responsibility like he’s used to. When it’s earlier than it should be, when the sky is still struggling to blink itself awake, he grabs his recurve bow and a few extra arrows and makes his way quietly out of the house, across the wide yard and towards the abandoned barn that sits on the edge of the property, lifeless and alone as if it’s practically an invitation for Clint in his own similar state. He stops a few feet away, craning his neck upwards at the weathered ceiling, and picks out a spot that slants deeper than the rest.

The familiar draw of the bow as he lifts his elbow towards his chin is soothing in a way that Clint can’t describe and he lets the arrow fly towards the barn, where it disappears into the lightening sky, drawing a thin pencil line against a spread of clouds. It lands squarely on the left side of the roof, disappearing into the building, and the next arrow doesn’t stick its landing quite as neatly but he tries to ignore the shake of his shoulders and continues to shoot until he’s completely out of arsenal, before heading into the barn and climbing the stairs to the deserted loft above.

Eight of the ten arrows lay scattered in various directions, the other two he finds hanging from the roof, looking discarded in the same way that he remembers from practicing in the circus, when he would sneak into the deserted Big Top after hours, when it was just him and his bow and sometimes the echoes of melodies from the performers who sang themselves to sleep. He collects the arrows easily, focusing on the smell of the barn, on the stale hay and the thick musty cloud of neglect, on the quiet humming of something resembling what he thinks might be crickets in the still air.

It’s not the range, and it’s not the quiet space Natasha has always managed to find for him whenever they’ve disappeared together, but Clint decides he likes it.

 

***

 

He picks up two postcards at the gas station down the street when he brings in Barney’s truck for inspection, spending his last few dollars on plastic pictures of mountains and cornfields, picking out the ones that have the words “ _Hello from Iowa_!” scribbled in white on the lower corners. He bends an edge of one and scrawls a few words on the back before sending it off to Northern California, the last known location of Natasha when he had spoken to her three days ago. He addresses the second one to Maria Hill, courtesy of Stark Industries, and includes a small smiley face because there’s a part of him that misses the days of being able to muck up reports for fun, without feeling anxious or worried about his own actions. Four days later, Clint’s lying on his back in front of the porch with his eyes closed, mentally mapping out a series of shots, when his burner phone rings once and then twice and then rather insistently in the seconds that follow.

“Where are you?”

The way Natasha’s breath huffs over the phone tells him more about her mood before her words reach him. “Where are _you_?”

Clint opens his eyes and sits up, arrows and bowstrings and a haunting touch of blue disappearing, images that are instead replaced with a white-spotted sky and the sounds of a tractor in the distance.

“Left you a note. Didn’t you get my postcard?”

“Right,” she responds dryly, clearing her throat. “It says you’re on a farm. What kind of crap code is that?”

Clint laughs a little, getting to his feet. “Not a code. It’s the truth. Works like a code, though…who the hell would believe that I have a farm?”

“Who indeed.”

“Seriously.” Clint pauses, leaning forward and picking strands of grass from his jeans. “You can come if you want.”

“What, you’re going turn me into Anne of Green Gables?” Her tone is full on teasing, what Clint suspects she’s chosen to deflect her true response, because he can hear the very real hint of anxiety poking through her verbal mask.

“Your hair’s growing. You’d look great in braids.”

Natasha _hmmms_ and Clint closes his eyes again in the silence that follows. “Who else is there?”

“It’s just me,” he says, before pausing. “And my brother’s here, too.”

“Your _brother_?”

“Kind of a long story,” Clint admits, because he’s suddenly not sure how to describe anything that’s happened, and there’s noise on the other end of the line that suggests Natasha is moving faster than she normally would.

“Give me five hours,” she says before hanging up, the dial tone bleeding into his ear.

 

***

 

Natasha arrives in a Honda Accord rental looking more tired than he would expect given the travel time, dark bags under her eyes and other parts of her body stiff when she walks, a tell he knows would probably go unnoticed by both their teammates and the general public. He meets her halfway across, strolling from where he had been previously stretched out on the porch swing, coming to a stop at the space where the road peters out into grass.

“Hi,” she greets gruffly, and he puts his thumbs on her skin, tracing the bruises along the length of her neck.

“Hi.”

She looks away and over his shoulder, craning her face into the distance, before meeting his eyes again. “Nice farm.”

She doesn’t say _we’ll talk later_ , but she doesn’t have to, because he hears it in her response.

“Thanks,” he says, and he doesn’t add _I know_ , because it’s hidden in his answer. He wraps one arm around her shoulder as he walks back towards the porch, noticing the way she trembles slightly when she climbs the steps, the way her glock bumps against the holster on her right leg.

 

***

 

Clint can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people in his life that he’s willingly introduced his brother too, without that person being a family friend or a mobster or a target. So when he brings Natasha into the kitchen, where Barney has his feet up on the table, the rest of him perched precariously on the edge of the chair with the back legs angled off the floor, he realizes for the first time that he’s not exactly sure what he’s doing, because everything seems strange and not at all how Clint pictured his “running away” life to be.

“Barney Barton,” his brother says when they enter the room, looking over his shoulder. “Saw you on TV.”

Clint sees the way the words catch in Natasha’s throat as she decides how to respond, and steps in front of them.

“Barney knows the whole deal,” he supplies, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Seems par for the course with me.”

“We were all caught off guard,” Natasha finally answers a little tightly, tilting her head and folding her arms, and Clint knows it’s her subtle attempt at dragging him away from impending self-loathing. “Some of us more than others.”

“Yeah,” Barney interjects, letting the chair legs fall to the floor with a loud _thwack_. “The world’s gone to shit, it seems.” He stands up, holding out a ruddy hand, and Clint watches the whole exchange feeling like he’s stuck in some alternate reality where someone who looks too much like him, with too much bravado and too little experience in the real world, is trying to figure out if there’s even a point to existing at all.

“Welcome to the farm, by the way.”

 

***

 

They eat dinner outside in the dimming light of the afternoon under the onslaught of an early evening, Clint sitting on the steps with Natasha pressed close against him, both the air and their breaths hazy with the smoky smell of burnt chicken and overcooked beans.

“So you have a farm,” Natasha says after they’ve sat in silence for far too long, and if it weren’t for the fact that her touch was so secure, Clint might’ve thought that she had some ulterior motive for coming out here to be with him.

“Apparently,” he says, nodding towards the house. “Or, well, my dad did. I still don’t understand it, but the papers are real.”

Natasha shrugs, putting down her plate. “We used to have a summer house by the sea. I think. It’s still…” She smiles faintly. “It’s been a long time. Sometimes I still don’t know what memories are real, but I like to think that one is.”

“The sea seems nice,” Clint murmurs, pressing his face into her hair, and she wraps her fingers around his calloused skin, company meeting solitary in the quietest way possible.

“I think it was.”

He can’t say _it’s good to see you_ , he can’t ask _how long until you pull me out of this?,_ or _what the hell happened to you and why didn’t you bother to let me help?_ So instead he just leans further into her body, letting the now empty plate slide off his lap and listening to the way her breathing intermingles with the cicadas that never seem to shut up.

 

***

 

“Don’t you dare expect me to start doing farm work,” Natasha warns the next morning over bacon and eggs, stirring milk into her coffee as Clint slides her plate across the table, wiping his hands on his jeans. Barney had woken up late, padded by the kitchen still in sweats and oversized black-framed glasses, had asked why the hell Clint was bothering to make _fucking bacon_ when they had a convenience store down the street with ready-made sandwiches, not to mention cereal and PopTarts and other things that would have been easy to throw together. Clint hadn’t responded, Natasha had conveniently stuck her head into the fridge for orange juice, and thankfully Barney had left before either of them had a chance to figure out how to tell him or not tell him that bacon and eggs in their language meant _I missed you_ , meant saying what was easier to express in silence.

“Farm work.” Clint puts his lips together and laughs once, shortly. “Lucky for you, I don’t think we’ve had a working crop here for years.” He turns back to the small stove, dropping another egg into the pan, raising his voice over the resounding hiss. “Just don’t let my brother bully you into helping him around the house, and you should be fine.”

“Please tell me when you have ever had to worry about me being bullied by _anyone_.”

Clint turns again, cracking a small smile. “Four years ago. Jasper Sitwell in the cafeteria.”

Natasha rolls her eyes. “If I had known he was Hydra then, I would’ve actually fired my gun instead of pretending to with the safety still on,” she says, shoving food into her mouth, and Clint stabs at the now yellow mess in the frying pan in the wake of her words.

“You slept okay,” she says after a moment, putting her hands on the table, and Clint feels her eyes on his back as he turns off the stove. “Is that normal?”

Clint finishes making his own plate and sits down, taking a breath. “Pretty much,” he admits. “The nightmares, I…they’re still there.”

“That’s not what I asked,” she says more gently than he thinks he deserves for outwardly avoiding her question, and Clint sighs again, this time more loudly.

“What do you want me to say, Nat?”

“I want you to be honest with me,” Natasha replies bluntly, and Clint suddenly feels frustrated.

“Like the way you’ve been honest with me about your recent missions?” He watches her twitch at his words, and she shakes her head.

“I’ve been entirely honest with what I’ve been doing and where I’ve been going,” she returns coolly, and Clint can’t help but laugh, a sound that earns him another scathing glare and crossed arms.

_“What?”_

“Oh, come on. _Entirely honest_ doesn’t explain the marks on your wrist,” he throws back, thinking of their first reunion. “Or the bruises. Or the way you’re obviously carrying around something that’s mentally exhausting you.” He’s baiting her, he knows, can see the way her mouth hardens as he talks, the way the fire in her pupils becomes a little more heated, but he doesn’t really care.

“Congratulations on reading me,” she says bitterly, shoving away her half-eaten plate of food. “Now you know how it feels when you won’t admit what’s bothering you half the time.” She pushes back from her chair, sending it halfway across the tile, and lowers her voice so that it’s deeper, slightly threatening in a way that he’s never heard her use in his presence before.

“I know we don’t need words to have a conversation, Barton. But open your goddamn mouth once in awhile and talk, rather than always running the hell away.”

 

***

 

Clint hears the slam of the door and lets her go, mostly because he knows running after her is futile, and mostly because he knows there’s nowhere for her to really go. She _could_ leave, he reasons, getting up and tossing the two plates into the sink, squirting blue liquid over the surfaces and suppressing an uncontrollable tremor at the sight. But he knows she won’t, that she wouldn’t have come all the way out here if she wasn’t intent on bringing him back, or at least intent on helping him figure out what the hell he was supposed to do _if_ he came back.

Barney’s nowhere to be found when Clint searches the house so he takes a shower, rubbing the grease and sweat of cooking out of his skin before throwing on his own casual clothes and making his way back downstairs. The living room window is wide open, stale summer air penetrating the inside of the house, and it’s still more quiet than he feels comfortable with, in a way that makes him think he’s not sure if he can stand to be alone for an undetermined amount of time with so many things blaring through his brain.

He grabs his bow and quiver from the hall closet and strides across the yard, returning to the sagging, falling apart barn. This time, he doesn’t bother to shoot into the roof, instead entering and climbing the rickety ladder to the loft, flopping down on his back and throwing his weapons to the side. After a moment of letting his breaths settle, he sits up and angrily strings an arrow, pulling a little too forcefully on the bow before letting it arc into the air and onto the other side of the wide space below him.

“Jesus Christ!” yelps a voice from the same direction and Clint jumps in tandem, his bow falling from his hand and clattering beside him. He shoves it back together hastily and scurries back down the ladder just in time to see his brother emerge from behind the wooden pole where Clint’s arrow has staked its claim, a pail of fresh hay clutched in his right hand.

“Watch where you shoot that goddamn thing, will you?” Barney grumbles, dropping the pail with a loud clang. “Didn’t think you were that much of a carnie that you’d aim without looking.”

“I did look,” Clint lies defensively. “Besides, how was I supposed to know that you were here?”

“Where else would I be?” Barney challenges. “Also, once I heard what was going on during breakfast, I figured there wasn’t really much to do other than flee the premise. Your girl’s nice, but I saw her face when she came out of the kitchen, and let me tell you.” He tugs Clint’s arrow from the pole, twirling it between his fingers. “I wouldn’t wanna be within ten feet of her right now.”

“You should see what she can do with her thighs,” Clint replies warily, and Barney raises an eyebrow.

“Maybe I should’ve followed you to the circus, rather than trying to make it on my own.”

Clint laughs, shaking his head. “No offense, but you wouldn’t have lasted one day at Carson’s. Or SHIELD,” he adds as an afterthought. “I barely did.”

“But you did,” his brother counters, tossing Clint his arrow, which he deftly catches with one hand. “And you did a lot of cool shit, from what I heard. Hell, when you left dad’s, you could barely lift your book bag, much draw a bow. And now you’re here hiding out in a farm.”

“An entire organization rooted in Nazi protocol is looking for me,” Clint protests. “And I don’t exactly have a job anymore.”

“Like I said.” Barney shrugs, as if he hasn’t heard Clint’s words. “You’re hiding out in a farm.”

Clint grumbles under his breath, flinging the arrow sideways, where it clatters to the floor near an unused stall that smells of faint manure. Barney moves past him, collecting more stale hay from the floor.

“Remember how we used to go hide in places like this when dad got angry?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, shoving his hands in his pockets and looking up at the loft. “The cellar, or that abandoned shed behind old Mrs. Sturwiess’ house next door.” He doesn’t mention the rest, that there were also card games and small lanterns and sometimes maybe crying, while Barney huddled against him, determined that if their dad really _did_ get too close, he’d hit him right back and scream until the neighbors came to their rescue.

“Wish you had your arrows, then,” Barney says suddenly. “Could’ve really shown dad who was boss.”

“Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t,” Clint muses, staring up at the loft. “Would’ve been doing my jail time earlier than I expected.”

Barney laughs as he moves forward, clapping a hand down on Clint’s shoulder.

“Yeah, but it would’ve been _good_.”

 

***

 

After Barney leaves to finish his chores, Clint stays in the barn for an undetermined amount of time, blindly shooting over and over again and finally emerging in what he thinks might be late afternoon. In the dimming light, he can faintly make out Natasha’s form sitting tensely on the edge of the porch swing, which is creaking slightly under her weight. Clint slows his gait as he approaches the house, climbing the stairs easily and dropping beside her, though she doesn’t bother to acknowledge his presence.

“230 acres of land, and you can’t even find another place on the property to mope,” he teases. Natasha pulls her legs further up onto the chair, as if trying to make herself smaller against his words.

“Why do you do this, Clint?”

It would be unwise, he thinks, to make the smart-ass response he so desperately wants to deflect with, so he leans back and cranes his neck towards the sky and settles on one that might be only halfway annoying.

“Old habits? End of the world? Threats of improper burial from my former assassin partner?”

Natasha groans quietly, shifting in the chair. “I mean why do you do this with me?”

Clint lets out a breath, shrugging and feeling entirely defeated. “I don’t know,” he admits tiredly. “I don’t – I like thinking that I’m capable. Confident. I’m stubborn like that.”

“Yes, you are,” Natasha says brusquely. “You’re probably the most stubborn person I’ve ever met, aside from myself.”

“Thanks for the affirmation,” he replies cynically, closing his eyes, and he hears the creak of the swing as Natasha gets up and starts to pace.

“I don’t need to know you’re okay,” she says when she finally speaks after a long time, the edges of her voice hard. “I can tell that without looking at you.” She stops in front of him and reaches for his arm, letting her fingers rest on his elbow until he opens his eyes. Natasha nods slowly, as if trying to convince him that it’s okay to talk, to just fucking _talk_ the way they used to before the world got blown to bits, and Clint nods back.

“But I do need you to be honest with me,” she continues, leaning forward. “If you want to keep running away, I need to at least know what you’re running from. If you want to come back and help me chase down Hydra, I need to know that you have a reason to.” She swallows in the silence and he thinks she might be trying to suppress a sort of cry. “I know you’re competent, Clint. I’ve never doubted that. Not even when you weren’t yourself, not during, and not after. But I need you to be competent with _me_.”

Clint considers her words and rolls his head to the side, suddenly feeling overwhelmed.

“You wanna go grab a drink?” he asks instead of fully responding, and for a moment, he’s worried that that she’ll slap him or yell at him or roll her eyes because he’s once _again_ avoided an actual conversation. But then Natasha straightens up and threads fingers through her hair, adjusting the sleeves of her jacket.

“Yes,” she says, and Clint thinks there’s sadness hidden in her tone.

 

***

 

He borrows Barney’s truck and drives them a few miles into town, to the bar that Clint has only been to a handful of times since arriving in Iowa, but that he knows generally isn’t more than half-full, even on the weekends. He ends up spending most of the ride apologizing for the truck’s bumpy gait before Natasha shuts him up by asking him if _he’s_ ever sat in the passenger seat when they’ve taken trips together, and it’s early enough that the place is mostly empty, save for what Clint supposes are a few in-town regulars. He slides onto one of the stools easily, ordering two beers in quick succession before Natasha has a chance to remove her coat.

“Please tell me you didn’t order PBR or something equally cheap,” she says as she watches the bartender out of the corner of her eye. “Because I know what you like to drink at home.” Clint laughs as two glasses appear before them.

“I think you’d rather murder me than drink PBR,” he acknowledges, shoving one towards her. “Guinness okay?”

It is, and he knows it is because she reaches for her cup with a small smile, clinking it against his own before swallowing down a few silent gulps.

“Can I ask you a question?” is what comes out of her mouth when it’s been four hours and they’re on their collective sixth beer, slightly more loose than usual, and Clint balances himself a little more on the edge of the seat, as much as he can without feeling like he’s going to fall over.

“Sure,” he says agreeably, taking another drink from a newly acquired glass.

“If you had the chance to do it all over, do you think you’d end up here?”

Clint moves his jaw, mulling over the word. He doesn’t know if she means here or _here_ , though he can tell as much, and his brain may be slightly jumbled from alcohol but he knows how to read Natasha, can detect exactly what she means when she asks a question, whether he’s sober or drunk. He takes a breath, playing with the hem of his jacket.

“I would have gotten out of Iowa, sure,” he says easily, ignoring her glance, because he knows she thinks he’s deflecting again. “That was always the plan, even before my dad made things more complicated. And once I joined up with the circus and got my skills together, found out I could make a decent enough living while also defending myself, there was always something in the back of my mind that made me want more.” He shrugs, leaning sideways on the bar top. “I guess I’d want to remove some of the more annoying shit in my life, like the things that messed me up, but I would’ve still ended up at SHIELD. Still would’ve taken that mission in Odessa. Still would’ve saved your life in that prison, even if I didn’t grow up the way I did.”

Natasha stays silent, taking a long drink. “That’s what I thought,” she says finally and Clint studies her face, the way her hand tightens around her glass, her fingers white with tension, like brittle twigs.

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah,” Clint nods. “You think you would’ve ended up here? If you had to do it all over?”

Natasha pushes her now-empty glass away. “Yeah,” she echoes. “I didn’t have a choice, really. I would have never had a choice where I began, because I had no control over who sold me to the Red Room. Those things…what I did, how I trained…they wouldn’t have been any different.” There’s something in her voice that’s guarded, something that sounds a little strained, and Clint tries to ignore it.

“But I would’ve come with you even if I knew there was a chance SHIELD could be corrupt.”

Clint blinks against impending dizziness, shoving his own beer aside as he searches her face, searches for honesty behind bright, wet eyes.

“But would you have stayed?” he presses, his stomach rolling in the wake of a question he doesn’t think he needs to be nervous about, a feeling that he knows has nothing to do with the amount he’s drank in the past few hours.

“Yes,” she says firmly, placing a hand on top of his, leaning over to kiss him lightly on the temple, her breath a welcome beam of heat against the ice he still feels running through his veins.

 

***

 

He lets Natasha drive them home, and they’re both not entirely under the alcohol limit but Natasha’s better at holding her liquor than he is, and Clint assures her it’s only a few miles and also that the likelihood of there being any cops on the road between here and the farm was probably pretty slim. Still, Natasha guides the lumbering truck slowly through the dark, and he lets himself drift in and out of sleep in the passenger seat, until they pull to a stop and his open eyes are assaulted with harsh glare of the porch light intermingling with the moon.

“Christ, that hurts,” he mutters, fumbling his way out of the truck as Natasha kills the engine. She waits until he’s by her side before wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and they both amble slowly up the stairs, while Clint gropes for the key in his pocket.

“The blind leading the blind,” he mutters as Natasha laughs quietly, kicking the door in and hitting the part of the wall where he knows the light switch is located. Before he can let his fingers find it, he feels another movement, and another hand that slaps his own away.

“No,” she breathes, tugging at the hem of his shirt, her alcohol-soaked breath burning against his skin, and it takes Clint a second to understand before he lets her lead him clumsily up the stairs and into the large guest bedroom where they’ve both been making themselves at home. Natasha pushes him down onto the bed before he even gets the door closed, shoving her mouth onto his, her hands already working to remove his shirt.

“You’ve been gone on and off for over two years, Barton,” she growls, and he can’t help the way he shakes as her tongue marks its territory against his ear. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about what we’ve missed.”

What he’s _missed_ is so much. What he’s _missed_ is her hands on his skin, her mouth on his own, the way she maps his body like she’s the only fucking person in the world who knows where he keeps all his secrets, knows which ones came from where and which ones he would never talk about. Clint arches his hips upwards as she undoes the button on his jeans, kissing her more fervently, and he doesn’t know whether it’s the liquor or just the fact that it’s been _too damn long_ , but he finds himself hard before she even gets his pants off. He’s got his hands on her breasts in an attempt to keep himself upright, his fingers moving underneath her shirt until he can unhook her bra, pulling her down on top of him so he can undress her more fully.

“Missed this?” he huffs out in a ragged breath, and she moans into his mouth as he gets rid of the rest of her clothes, rolling to the side so he can kiss her more deeply.

“You apparently did,” she answers when she finds her voice, sliding her tongue out of his mouth and trailing it down his collarbone, licking lazily down his chest. He doesn’t bother to pay attention to however long it takes her to go down on him, just lets her mouth find his cock with the same precise and sure movement that he knows and remembers, and grabs for the sheets in the absence of having her body to hold onto.

“Fuck,” he breathes as Natasha works on him, using her tongue to draw circles over his head while her free hand reaches for his. He grasps it tightly, nails digging into her palm, while she hums quietly with her mouth still wrapped around him, what he thinks could be threnody in the wake of a re-birth that has been too long in the making.

“You wanna come?” she asks when she pulls out, her lips full and red, and Clint doesn’t bother to answer, pulling her down on top of him in confirmation. She slides in easily, rocks her hips up against him in a way that makes Clint squirm uncontrollably, and Natasha pushes him down roughly by the shoulders.

“Don’t break the bed,” she exhales, and he laughs into her mouth, desperate for something tangible, for something real, for something familiar.

And then Natasha is coming with his name on her lips, all her sharp edges and jagged lines falling apart and smoothing out in his hold as they meld their bodies together, and as Clint loses control inside of her, he distantly wonders if Barney even cares that they’re not so subtly making love in what might have been at one time his childhood bedroom or something notably close. He pulls her closer against him as her breaths become more erratic, her body relaxing in the wake of her orgasm, and he matches his own inhalations to hers. It’s a trick she’s used on him dozens of times during nightmares, to help bring him back from his panicked state, and though Clint knows it’s not really necessary at this moment, it feels right enough – a connection, a resurrection, a fusing of a chasm. After a few moments of breathing in tandem, he feels her start to quiet, and when she raises her head he uses his free hand to move damp hair from her forehead.

Her eyeliner is running in deep tracks halfway down her cheeks, and there’s a glaze in her eyes that he figures might be half from drinking and half from sex, and when she speaks her voice sounds like it’s on the verge of breaking.

“I knew him.”

It takes Clint a moment to realize she’s talking to him, that she’s talked at all, and he shifts so he can look at her better.

“You knew who?”

“Him,” she repeats, her gaze still frozen. “The Winter Soldier.”

At that, Clint moves more abruptly, sitting up as Natasha scrambles off him and onto the covers. “How?” he asks, his voice hoarse and breathless, and Natasha adjusts her position and curls into his side.

“The Red Room. The years I spent in Russia. I was the Widow, and he was The Asset.” She swallows, if trying to force out words that don’t want to come. “I didn’t remember him. Not until he showed up and tried to kill Fury…tried to kill us.”

“He remember you?” Clint asks, speaking more to the sky than to her, and he feels Natasha nod beside him.

“Yes.”

“Did you know that he remembered you when you decided to go after him?”

Natasha sighs. “Yes,” she admits. “I was 11, I think. If you wanted to know. He trained me, before they sent him off for what they would call conditioning. Did the same thing to me, and by the time I got out, I couldn’t remember him at all. Only that maybe there was someone with his name that I cared about once, that maybe he was the one thing in a world of knives and guns that wasn’t razor blades and gunmetal.”

“So you hadn’t seen him until now,” Clint says, reaching for her hand, the smallest gesture of encouragement, and Natasha shakes her head.

“No. He was in Odessa.”

Clint’s eyebrows shoot into his head. “He was – he was in _Odessa_?” He racks his foggy brain trying to figure out how he could’ve been so damn idiotic as to not remember some assassin with a metal arm.

“Yes. He’s the one that shot out the tires of the engineer I was escorting, the one who shot me afterwards and left me to die. When I was in that prison, before you ambushed it, when I was sick because of that bullet wound that no one could fix.” She takes his palm and places it over the scar on her stomach, letting his fingers brush gently against the jagged skin, and Clint finds himself remembering how it was the first of her many imperfections that she willingly opened up to him about. “Soviet slug…no rifling.”

“Fucking hell,” Clint mutters, closing his eyes, keeping his hand on her skin, as if there’s a way that he can somehow keep the pain at bay by just using his touch.

“I went after him because I wanted to know if it was true. If that one person ever really existed, even though I knew what the history books said. There was so much pretending in my own life that I needed to know if it had ever been real.”

“And?” Clint asks slowly, because it still doesn’t explain the injuries, or the way she’s been evading his questions.

“And it was,” she says softly. “So I learned that. But I also learned that you can never go back to what you had before.”

Clint rubs his eyes, feeling suddenly exhausted. “Where is he now?”

“Somewhere in New York. That’s where I left him, before I decided to come here.”

She falls quiet again and he uses the moment to take her in his arms. There are things he still wants to say, things like _I’m sorry_ , and things like _I didn’t know_ , and things like _I still love you_. Instead, he lets his lips do what his voice can’t, until she falls asleep against him, her easy breathing a lull in the aftermath of too many secrets and too many confessions.

 

***

 

When Clint opens his eyes again, there’s sparse sunlight streaming through the cracks in the blinds that aren’t fully closed, a brightness that signals it’s probably later than it should be, a faint odor of coffee that suggests his brother or possibly Natasha has been up for some time, and a soft creaking of the farmhouse floor where boots are slapping against the chaffed wood. He shifts from lying on his back to his side and meets Natasha’s face, one cheek pressed into the pillow next to his head, her hair messily bent against the pillow like spilled wine. The sight makes him smile, and he reaches up to touch her lips with the pad of his thumb.

“Were you watching me?”

“Yes,” Natasha says quietly, angling closer so that their still-naked bodies are pressed against each other, skin-to-skin. “I missed it.”

“Missed watching me drool while I was passed out?” he asks groggily, struggling to become more alert.

“No,” she says, tucking her head underneath his chin the way a child might do, and he feels the cold metal of her arrow against his skin. “I missed you sleeping like this.”

She doesn’t say _I missed you not being restless_ , she doesn’t say _I missed you not being plagued with guilt_ , but he hears the words anyway and drags one finger across her back, trailing his pointer along her spine.

“Good to be home, I guess,” he says as he closes his eyes again, and she squeezes his hand.

 

***

 

“I hope you didn’t desecrate what probably could have been your childhood bedroom,” Barney says when Natasha is showering and Clint has finally made his way downstairs. He’s sitting in the living room with an open flannel shirt and a coffee, and Clint manages a small laugh.

“You were supposed to be sleeping.”

“I _was_ sleeping,” Barney responds, getting up. “Until about two in the morning, that is. Guess I should thank you for not doing it in the back of my truck.”

Clint laughs again and Barney smiles, and it’s the first time Clint’s actually felt something like a light inside of him for a long time, and he tries to memorize the feeling so that he knows how to get it back.

 

***

 

He takes Natasha to the barn with his arrows, and carves little circles in one of the wooden poles with his pocketknife while she climbs to the top of the hayloft and takes aim at each one, every arrow hitting its mark with the speed and assurance that Clint remembers during her first real months of training. She had been a natural then, she was a natural now, and he gives her a look of approval as the last arrow careens through the air, landing just a hair to the side of his head, close enough that he can feel its breath against his own skin, his heart pounding because he’s never felt so safe.

“Told you I still got it,” and she shoulders the bow, and her face is relaxed and sunned against the atmosphere of the otherwise dank barn.

 

***

 

Over hamburgers on the grill and corn on the cob and the soft trill of wind chimes in the distance, Barney tells Clint and Natasha stories of their childhood, though Clint notes he’s smart enough to leave out certain instances, like the time that he almost split his head open by jumping off the bridge in the woods by their house, or the time that Barney almost tried to go after their dad, which resulted in a hospital stay that no one dared to bring up ever again. Natasha laughs and Clint wonders if she feels the way he did earlier, and she doesn’t have stories of her own to trade but she does drop a few mentions of assignments during her and Clint’s early days in SHIELD, and how there were more than a few close calls due to Clint’s inability to follow the rules of his supervisors.

The conversation is refreshing and normal in a way Clint feels he hasn’t had in a long time, not even when it’s been just him and Natasha eating Chinese take-out in each other’s laps, and as the sun dips behind the landscape he finds himself sprawled backwards on the porch with her cuddled into his side, their legs tangled together, her borrowed sweatshirt swimming its way over his own body.

“You want to stay,” Natasha says long after Barney’s left to clean the rest of the dishes, and Clint bites down on his lip, because he doesn’t really know how to respond.

“I don’t know,” he says slowly, turning his gaze towards the open space in front of them. “I can’t remember the last time I felt okay like this.”

“It’s an easy way out,” Natasha says, nestling into his arm. “I like the farm. And I like you here.”

“But you don’t want to be here,” Clint finishes as he looks down, and Natasha smiles sadly.

“I belong where you belong,” she says after a beat. “I know that. Whether it’s a farm in the middle of Iowa, or an apartment in New York, or a boat in the middle of the Pacific…” She sits up, folding her legs in front of her. “But none of those things mean anything if you’re not okay. So please, Clint.” She pauses, as if trying to let her words sink in. “Don’t go back if you’re not okay.”

“Are you?” Clint asks quietly. _Going back_? He doesn’t say the last part out loud, though he knows he doesn’t need to.

“Yeah,” Natasha says, curling her fingers around his palm, and Clint breathes out once.

“Okay,” he says as she leans against him again, a warm solid mass in the chilly evening, a touch that he feels can say everything and nothing all at once.

 

***

 

“I’ll write,” Natasha says the next morning, standing by the door of her car, and Clint smiles.

“You won’t,” he says because that’s not who they are, they’re not made up of conventional things like letters and sappy words, they’re made up of complicated instances like codes and silence and debts.

“You’re right, I won’t,” Natasha agrees, squinting into his face, against the sun that’s slanting in their direction.

“Smoke signal?”

“Maybe.” She tips her head upwards, kissing him gently before pulling away. “We never got to use that code.”

“Yeah,” he concurs with a small smirk. “6-7-2, right?”

Natasha turns halfway to the car, meets his eyes across the hood, and when she speaks her voice can barely be heard over the sudden rush of wind.

“6-7-2.”

He waits until the car has disappeared down the road, thinks about how this time he’s the one watching until he can’t watch anymore, making sure that she’s okay even though he knows he doesn’t really need to, and then heads back to the house.

 

***

 

“You don’t have to stay,” Barney says when they’re in the loft later that night, sitting cross-legged across from each other in a mirror of the way they used to do when they were hiding out together as kids. Clint shrugs.

“I know.”

“I mean, seriously. Don’t stay because of me. I’ll be okay on my own.”

“Will you?” Clint asks scathingly, and Barney rolls his eyes.

“What, you’re worried the chickens and hay won’t keep me company? Anyway, I think I did okay for myself, all things considered. And maybe this’ll force me get out of Iowa, now that I have people to visit.”

“Maybe,” Clint muses, although he thinks that they both know the truth, that Barney’s not really like that, that if Clint ever sees his brother in the future it most likely won’t be without something random attached to it, like a felony or a mob.

“You don’t believe me.”

“No, I do,” Clint lies with all the smoothness he’s managed to procure during his years in the field, and Barney shakes his head, leaning back on his elbows and staring up at the spots that Clint knows are riddled with marks from his arrows.

“I don’t know how Natasha puts up with you sometimes.”

Clint snorts, leaning back next to him. “Yeah…me neither.”

  
***

 

Barney drives Clint to the Waverly bus depot the following afternoon, sends him off with both a one-way Greyhound ticket to Port Authority and a green magnet with yellow writing that reads “ _Iowa, Hawkeye State, Des Moines_ ” along with a picture of cornstalks.

“Funny,” Clint says sarcastically as he reads it, before stooping to shove it in the front pocket of his bag. Barney grins.

“Put it on your fridge in the big city and think of me.”

Clint tilts his head, meeting his brother’s gaze, and squeezes his shoulder. “I’ll try.”

 

***

 

He calls her from somewhere between Chicago’s South Bend and Akron, Ohio, hears her surprised voice as she picks up the phone.

“Where are you?”

Clint lets the silence settle between them, lets her hear the roar of the bus and the chatter of the other passengers, the messy bumps as the vehicle speeds along the highway, leaving nature and small towns and road signs in its wake.

“Barton?”

“6-7-2,” Clint says when he speaks again, and he hears Natasha react by the way her breathing quickens, while he imagines the way her face changes as she comprehends his words.

“Yeah. I love you, too.”

 

***

 

She’s waiting in New York when he steps off the bus, sweaty and exhausted and cramped from over a day’s worth of travel, and it’s not that he hasn’t thought she would come. But there’s something about seeing her standing in the terminal, an anchor in between a sea of moving people, with a grey-stripped hoodie covering most of her fire-red hair and her hands clasped tightly against each arm as if she’s physically trying to hold herself together.

Clint pushes through the bags and business suits and screaming children until he’s close enough to touch her and when he does it feels like home, and it feels solid, and it feels like what they spent years not being able to say. And so they kiss in the bowels of the station, worlds away from farms and barns and open fields, throwing caution to the wind because paranoia be damned, and he feels the broken pieces of his soul slowly start to heal.

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of loosely tinkered with Clint’s backstory, and I know I definitely did where the relationship with Barney was concerned, but for the most part, it hopefully falls into what’s mostly canon. And this is an [actual (perfect) magnet that exists](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41h0amcg9ML.AA400_PIcountsize-144,TopRight,0,0_AA400_SH20_.jpg).
> 
> Comments/kudos are appreciated!


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